We’re a family of seven living in rural Missouri.

Beau is a software engineer, and Allena is a full-time (over-time?) mom. Our five kids are Dominic, Elizabeth, Teresa, William, and Julianna. Dominic is home-schooled and Elizabeth has been starting pre-k/kindergarten as a home-schooled child too.

Our adventures in farming began a few years ago when we decided to buy a little land so we could get some horses. We ended up with a place with 10 acres, and thought…as long as we’ve got some land, might as well get some chickens too.

Things went along pretty well. We enjoyed the country life, but decided it would be nice to have some more animals. Only, what to get? We didn’t want cattle, even though that’s the predominant stock animal in Missouri - it was just too expensive to get started. We didn’t want goats because (in our ignorance) we thought they were only good as meat and dairy animals. So we decided to get some sheep. We started looking around at breeds and found Icelandic sheep…we thought “what a great animal!” and then we found out how much Icelandic sheep cost. So we kept looking around, and found Shetlands…just like little Icelandics, and much more affordable.

We ended up with our first sheep - two Shetlands, two Merinos, and one Shetland-Merino cross, all of them ewes. All of them came from Fairlight Farm and we got a bargain. We created their website in exchange for about half the cost of all five of the sheep, so our initial investment was very reasonable. We absolutely love them all, particularly the Shetlands. They were everything we were looking for in a stock animal. We acquired a Shetland ram a few months later and our flock had the ability to grow.

So…we now had five kids, two horses, a bunch of chickens, six sheep, six cats, one dog, and one duck. Life is like a circus around our house, so we became “The Three Ring Ranch”.

Since acquiring the sheep, Allena has become a full-blown fiber fanatic. She’s learned how to spin, and her knitting skills have flourished. She’s also done a lot of experimentation with dyeing wool. Beau has been slower to learn the fiber arts, but vows to change. Even Dominic has learned to spin yarn on a drop-spindle.

Eventually, we decided that dairy goats would be a good idea (five kids drink a LOT of milk!) and we ended up with some La Mancha goats.

We hope you enjoy our site!